There's
no apparent rhyme nor reason for the scheduling of these nine sitcoms.
Some were on just over a week before departing. And often the shows
ended their run in the middle of the week (Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday)
rather than on Fridays, as most daily reruns do.

This mind-boggling
approach to adding and subtracting the shows in the mix, plus the fact
that the shows themselves ranged from enjoyable to unendurable, no doubted
contributed to the series' demise.

Yet "Comedy Time"
did run two years, an impressive amount given NBC's somewhat jittery
daily programming practices in the 1950s. And until now these programs'
repeat history have been barely mentioned in TV books and articles,
not to mention the shows themselves. To rectify this situation, I looked
at videotapes of most of them to get a better sense of what viewers
had a chance to see a second time around on NBC in the 1950s.

"I
Married Joan" was the leadoff in "Comedy Time," and it made
a sensible choice for a debut with its appeal for children and women
at the time.

Virtually everyone
agrees that the sitcom, which starred Joan Davis and Jim Backus, was
an "I Love Lucy" copycat. That opinion grows stronger when one knows
that Marc Daniels, who directed the first season of "I Love Lucy" (1951-52),
did the same task for the initial season of "I Married Joan."

The
show, dealing with a judge who has
a wacky wife, was an easy sell to many TV stations in 1952.
Billboard magazine claimed at the time it could be seen in 64 out of
66 local station markets in America, believed to be a record at the
time.

But while "I Married
Joan" prospered for a few years, it never generated the ratings nor
critical approval which "I Love Lucy" received. The writing was nowhere
near as clever, with Joan looking to be more of an idiot than Lucy Ricardo
ever was in plots which were more stupid than inventive.

Several
shows consisted of two different playlets divided by a commercial, which
makes one wonder if the writers were unable to construct enough storylines
to last a mere half hour.

There also was no
supporting cast to rival that of Fred and Ethel Mertz, and as good as
Joan Davis and Jim Backus were, they alone could not make up for this
absence.

What
makes "I Married Joan" interesting
in retrospect is its network history. In its third year (1954-55), "I
Married Joan" died opposite Disneyland on ABC Wednesday nights.

But in daytime TV,
when it returned for its second go-round in the fall of 1956, NBC moved
"Comedy Time" to 5 p.m. daily opposite "The Mickey Mouse Club," which
like "Disneyland" was a Walt Disney production.

This
time, Joan beat the Disney product in the fall and winter of 1956, leading
ABC to install its own series of kiddie-based reruns of "The
Adventures of Superman" and others in the fall of 1957. Called
"Fun at Five," the ABC series ran opposite "Comedy Time" and trounced
the latter, ultimately forcing Comedy Time's cancellation in 1958.

NBC's
first series to replace "I Married Joan" on "Comedy Time" was "So
This is Hollywood," a so-so offering with tall, statuesque Mitzi
Green as stuntwoman Queenie Dugan and Virginia Gibson as her ingenue
roommate Kim Tracy.

The
two women were close, even sleeping
in a double bed (?!) in their small ground-level apartment at
fictional La Paloma Court on Sweetzer Avenue in Los Angeles while trying
to encourage each other's dreams of making it in show business. Each
had a boyfriend, with Queenie's being a dumb lug named Hubie Dodd (played
by Gordon Jones) who often worked with her as a stunt double.

Many
of the stories employed both women on studio sets dropping names of
famous producers and directors, making it interesting for those who
love Hollywood. But the show's mixture of slapstick and sentimentality
looked sloppy when it ran from January through June 1955 opposite "The
Jackie Gleason Show," then the #2 show on television - featuring a comedian
who was expert in combining slapstick and sentimentality into
his sketches.

However, "So This
is Hollywood" may hold the record as being the first to show an opener
of upcoming scenes from that night's show before the first commercial,
as well as a preview of a scene from next week's episode.

And for those of
you who wondered if art imitated life, well, while Mitzi Green never
did another series, while Virginia Gibson did have a nine-year run hosting
ABC's daytime children's series "Discovery" (1962-71).